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Affiliate Marketing

Below you'll find the posts at Sugarrae from the affiliate marketing category. I highly recommend you read each of them if you're serious about making an income as an affiliate marketer.

If you already know about affiliate marketing and want to get straight to the tips and strategies for making more money with it, click here.

If you're not familiar with affiliate marketing or are unsure of how it works, keep reading.

How does affiliate marketing work?

Affiliate marketing allows you to recommend products and services from other companies and be paid a commission if someone buys the product as the result of your recommendation. To track which purchases happens as a result of your recommendation(s), the merchant will provide you with a special link to use when linking to their website that contains a unique referral code assigned to you. If people click that unique link, and buy the product or service within a specified timeframe (the timeframe varies depending on the merchant), you get a commission on the sale.

The products cost the consumer the same amount of money as it would if they didn't buy it through your affiliate link, but the merchant pays you a referral fee for generating the sale. For a visual explanation of this process, click here.

So affiliate marketing is legitimate?

Absolutely. Affiliate marketing is a viable and legitimate way to monetize your blog or website. Tens of thousands of merchants run affiliate programs and will pay you a commission for sending them sales. However, there are some scams centered around affiliate marketing. You'll find information on how to spot affiliate scams – and avoid them – here.

So how do you find affiliate programs to promote?

The easiest way to find affiliate programs to promote is to check if the people selling products and services you love have an affiliate program – assuming those products and services would be relevant to the visitors to your blog or website. There are also multiple ways to find new quality products or services to promote to your audience based on their interests. You'll find more information on how to do this here.

Is affiliate marketing free?

Yes and no. You should never pay to become an affiliate for a merchant's program. Joining and promoting an affiliate program is a free opportunity. If someone is asking you to spend money to become their affiliate, then you're being presented with an affiliate scam and should steer clear of that program.

While joining affiliate programs is a free opportunity, it's a business – and like any business, it will cost some money to start and run it. But those costs will be associated with building, running and promoting your blog or website. There are many tools – free and paid - you can use to assist you with all of these processes. I list a few of my favorite affiliate marketing tools here.

Can you really make passive income with affiliate marketing?

Yes and no. Affiliate marketing can generate passive income, but the passive side of the income usually only follows putting in a few years of hard work to generate the brand and audience you'll need to begin generating those passive sales. I have multiple sites earning passive income, but each of those sites took a lot of front end work to build up to that point. And not every site gets to the point of passive income. Some sites require continual maintenance though the revenue they generate can also allow you to pay for that maintenance to be done vs. you needing to do it yourself.

Anyone promising to teach you how you can make thousands without putting in much work is selling you the dream and should be avoided.

How to Find Affiliate Programs

May 2, 2011 By Rae |

On my latest post about avoiding affiliate marketing scams, a commenter named Chance Hoggan asked the following question in the comments:"Where would you recommended people go to find affiliate products to promote?"Since this was also brought up on the Sugarrae fan page on Facebook when I …

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Avoiding Affiliate Marketing Scams

April 28, 2011 By Rae |

I see a lot of newbies to the affiliate arena ask the question of whether or not affiliate marketing (associate marketing, whatever you want to call it) is a scam, especially when they see a two (or more) tiered program (meaning affiliates can earn off the affiliates they bring into the program …

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Penalties, issues and filtering; it’s all just semantics

October 9, 2009 By Rae |

I was reading the recap Shawn Collins did for his trip to SMX on day one, and a comment he made within it got my attention:Some interesting revelations in the duplicate content session, such as Google's Joachim Kupke saying there is no duplicate content penalty and that Google is "working on …

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Examples in Affiliate Branding

December 15, 2008 By Rae |

About 18 months ago, I wrote what I consider to be the best post I've ever written on the topic of affiliate marketing, how to survive the affiliate evolution.When I say that I wrote out my business plan and posted it on my blog in that post, I'm not kidding. And that statement is still true …

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Affiliate Marketing vs Adsense

February 15, 2008 By Rae |

Before I leave, I wanted to get something off my chest. The alternate title for this post was: "Why you shouldn't depend on webmaster welfare". For those out of the loop, "webmaster welfare" is a term used to describe Adsense that apparently can be credited back to IncrediBill.To me, a made for …

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How to Survive the Affiliate Evolution

June 14, 2007 By Rae |

I've been wanting to blog about this for a while. If you're new or just starting out in affiliate marketing, this post is not for you. I understand that you won't neccessarily have the resources to pull this strategy off in it's entirety. If you're an affiliate who's career is less than a year old, …

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Please note – I use affiliate links on this site. This means I might earn a commission if you click on a link and sign up for something.

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Best of Sugarrae

11 Things My Son Taught Me about Life & Business

Women, Tech Conferences and the BullSh!t Surrounding It

27 Detailed Ways to Generate New Blog Post Ideas

Google Propaganda, SEO and Why Marketers Need to Wake Up

How to Find the Best Affiliate Programs in Your Niche

48 Things I Know Now That I Wish I Knew Then

A Call for a Search Discussion – How Google Works

How to Survive the Affiliate Evolution

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